Poland enters in ‘Reverse’ for Oscar

Gdynia fest winner does not have U.S. distributor

WARSAW — Poland’s candidate for a foreign-language film Oscar nomination is Borys Lankosz’s “The Reverse,” which won the award for Polish film at the recently concluded Gdynia Film Festival.

It is the feature debut of documentary filmmaker Lankosz.

The film is a darkly humorous suspense story told against the backdrop of communist Poland in the 1950s. Three women — a young girl, her mother and her grandmother — find themselves in an unexpected situation when the boyfriend of the girl turns out to be a secret service agent. At a spur of the moment choice the girl poisons the agent and the three women face the challenge of dealing with the body.

“The Reverse” was produced by KADR studio – a film co-operative in which such filmmakers as Andrzej Wajda and Jerzy Kawalerowicz made their most important films of 1950s and 1960s. It marks the studio’s return to film production after a 15-year hiatus.